The Crossing

by Cormac McCarthy

  Que piensa usted? he said. Billy said that he had no opinion beyond the one he'd given. He said that whether a man's life was writ in a book someplace or whether it took its form day by day was one and the same for it had but one reality and that was the living of it. He said that while it was true that men shape their own lives it was also true that they could have no shape other for what then would that shape be?

  Bien dicho, the man said. He looked across the country. He said that he could read men's thoughts. Billy didnt point out to him that he'd already asked him twice for his. He asked the man could he tell what he was thinking now but the man only said that their thoughts were one and the same. Then he said he harbored no grudge toward any man over a woman for they were only property afoot to be confiscated and that it was no more than a game and not to be taken seriously by real men. He said that he had no very high opinion of men who killed over whores. In any case, he said, the bitch was dead, the world rolled on.

  He smiled again. He had something in his mouth and he rolled it to one side and sucked at his teeth and rolled it back. He touched his hat.

  Bueno, he said. El camino espera.

  He touched his hat again and roweled the horse and sawed it around until its eyes rolled and it squatted and stamped and then went trotting out through the trees and into the road where it soon disappeared from sight. Billy unbuckled the mochila and took out the pistol and thumbed open the gate and turned the cylinder and checked the chambers and then lowered the hammer with his thumb and sat for a long time listening and waiting.

  On the fifteenth of May by the first newspaper he'd seen in seven weeks he rode again into Casas Grandes and stabled his horse and took a room at the Camino Recto Hotel. He rose in the morning and walked down the tiled hallway to the bath. When he came back he stood in the window where the morning light fell slant upon the raw cords in the worn carpet underfoot and listened to a girl singing in the garden below. She was sitting on a cloth of white canvas and piled on the canvas were nueces or pecans some bushels in quantity. She sat with a flat stone in the crook of her knees and she was breaking the pecans with a stone mano and as she worked she sang. Leaning forward with her dark hair veiled about her hands she worked and sang. She sang:

  Pueblo de Bachiniva

  Abril era el mes

  Jinetes armados

  Llegaron los seis

  She crushed the hulls between the stones, she separated out the meats and dropped them in a jar at her side.

  Si tenia miedo

  No se le veia en su cara

  Cuantos vayan llegando

  El guerito les espera

  Splitting out with her fineboned fingers the meat from the hulls, the delicate fissured hemispheres in which is writ we must believe each feature of the tree which bore them, each feature of the tree they'd come to bear. Then she sang the same two verses over. He buttoned his shirt and got his hat and went down the stairs and out into the courtyard. When she saw him coming across the cobbles she stopped singing. He touched his hat and wished her a good day. She looked up and smiled. She was a girl of perhaps sixteen. She was very beautiful. He asked her if she knew any more verses of the corrido which she sang but she did not. She said that it was an old corrido. She said that it was very sad and that at the end the guerito and his novia die in each other's arms for they have no more ammunition. She said that at the end the patron's men ride away and the people come from the town and carry the guerito and his novia to a secret place and bury them there and the little birds flew away but that she did not remember all the words and anyway she was embarrassed that he had been listening to her sing. He smiled. He told her that she had a pretty voice and she turned away and clucked her tongue.

  He stood looking out across the courtyard toward the mountains to the west. The girl watched him.

  Deme su mano, she said.

  Mande?

  Deme su mano. She held out her own hand in a fist before her. He squatted on his bootheels and held out his hand and she gave him a handful of the shelled pecans and then closed his hand with hers and looked about as if it were some secret gift and someone might see. Andale pues, she said. He thanked her and stood and walked back across the courtyard and up to his room but when he looked from the window again she was gone.

  Days to come he rode up through the high country of the Babicora. He'd build his fire in some sheltered swale and at night sometimes he'd walk out over the grasslands and lie on the ground in the world's silence and study the burning firmament above him. Walking back to the fire those nights he often thought about Boyd, thought of him sitting by night at just such a fire in just such country. The fire in the bajada no more than a glow, hid in the ground like some secret glimpse of the earth's burning core broke through into the darkness. He seemed to himself a person with no prior life. As if he had died in some way years ago and was ever after some other being who had no history, who had no ponderable life to come.

  He saw in his riding occasional parties of vaqueros crossing the high grasslands, sometimes mounted on mules for their good footing in the mountains, sometimes driving beeves before them. It was cold in the mountains at night but they seemed thinly dressed and had only their serapes in which to sleep. They were called mascarenas for the whitefaced cattle bred on the Babicora and they were called agringados because they worked for the white man. They crossed in silent defile over the talus slopes and rode up through the passes toward the high grassy vegas, sitting their horses with their easy formality, the low sun catching the tin cups tied to their saddlehorns. He saw their fires burning on the mountain at night but never did he go to them.

  On a certain evening just before dark he entered into a road and turned and followed it west. The red sun that burned in the broad gap of the mountains before him sloughed out of its form and was slowly sucked away to light all the sky in a deep red afterflash. When darkness had come there stood in the distance on the plain the single yellow light from a dwelling and he rode on until he came to a small weatherboard cabin and sat the horse before it and called out.

  A man came to the door and stepped out onto the gallery. Quien es? he said.

  Un viajero.

  Cuantos son ustedes?

  Yo solo.

  Bueno, the man said. Desmonte. Pasale.

  He stepped down and tied the bridlereins about the porch post and mounted the steps and removed his hat. The man held the door for him and he entered and the man followed and shut the door and nodded toward the fire.

  They sat and drank coffee. The man's name was Quijada and he was a Yaqui indian from western Sonora and he was the same gerente of the Nahuerichic division of the Babicora who'd told Boyd to cut their horses out of the remuda and take them. He'd seen the lone guero riding in the mountains and told the alguacil not to molest him. He told his guest that he knew who he was and why he'd come. Then he leaned back in his chair. He raised the cup to his lips and drank and watched the fire.

  You're the man give us back our horses, Billy said.

  He nodded. He leaned forward and he looked at Billy and then he sat looking into the fire. The thick handleless porcelain cup from which he drank looked like a chemist's mortar and he sat with his elbows on his knees and held it before him in both hands and Billy thought that he would say something more but he did not. Billy drank from his cup and sat holding it. The fire ticked. Outside in the world all was silence. Is my brother dead? he said.

  Yes.

  He was killed in Ignacio Zaragosa?

  No. In San Lorenzo.

  The girl too?

  No. When they took her away she was covered in blood and she was falling down and so it was natural that people thought that she had been shot but it was not so.

  What became of her?

  I dont know. Perhaps she went back to her family. She was very young.

  I asked about her in Namiquipa. They didnt know what had become of her.

  They would not tell you in Namiquipa.

  Where is my brother buried
?

  He is buried at Buenaventura.

  Is there a stone?

  There is a board. He was very popular with the people. He was a popular figure.

  He didnt kill the manco in La Boquilla.

  I know.

  I was there.

  Yes. He killed two men in Galeana. No one knows why. They did not even work for the latifundio. But the brother of one was a friend to Pedro Lopez.

  The alguacil.

  The alguacil. Yes.

  He'd seen him once in the mountains, he and his henchmen, the three of them descending a ridgeline in the twilight. The alguacil carried a short sword in a beltscabbard and he answered to no one. Quijada leaned back and sat with his boots crossed before him. The cup in his lap. Both watched the fire. As if some work were there annealing. Quijada raised his cup as if to drink. Then he lowered it again.

  There is the latifundio of Babicora, he said. With all the wealth and power of Mr Hearst to call upon. And there are the campesinos in their rags. Which do you believe will prevail?

  I dont know.

  His days are numbered.

  Mr Hearst?

  Yes.

  Why do you work for the Babicora?

  Because they pay me.

  Who was Socorro Rivera?

  Quijada tapped the rim of his cup softly with the gold band on his finger. Socorro Rivera tried to organize the workers against the latifundio. He was killed at the paraje of Las Varitas by the Guardias Blancas five years ago along with two other men. Crecencio Macias and Manuel Jimenez.

  Billy nodded.

  The soul of Mexico is very old, said Quijada. Whoever claims to know it is either a liar or a fool. Or both. Now that the yankees have again betrayed them the Mexicans are eager to reclaim their indian blood. But we do not want them. Most particularly the Yaqui. The Yaqui have long memories.

  I believe you. Did you ever see my brother again after we left with the horses?

  No.

  How do you know about him?

  He was a hunted man. Where would you go? Inevitably he was taken in by Casares. You go to the enemy of your enemies.

  He was only fifteen. Sixteen, I guess.

  All the better.

  They didnt take very good care of him, did they?

  He didnt want to be taken care of. He wanted to shoot people. What makes one a good enemy also makes one a good friend.

  Yet you work for Mr Hearst?

  Yes.

  He turned and looked at Billy. I am not a Mexican, he said. I dont have these loyalties. These obligations. I have others.

  Would you have shot him yourself?

  Your brother?

  Yes.

  If it had come to that. Yes.

  Maybe I ought not to be drinkin your coffee.

  Maybe not.

  They sat for a long time. Finally Quijada leaned forward and studied his cup. He should have gone home, he said.

  Yes.

  Why didnt he?

  I dont know. Maybe the girl.

  The girl would not have gone with him?

  I suppose she would have. He didnt rightly have a home to go to.

  Maybe you are the one who should have cared for him better.

  He wasnt easy to care for. You said it yourself.

  Yes.

  What does the corrido say?

  Quijada shook his head. The corrido tells all and it tells nothing. I heard the tale of the guerito years ago. Before your brother was even born.

  You dont think it tells about him?

  Yes, it tells about him. It tells what it wishes to tell. It tells what makes the story run. The corrido is the poor man's history. It does not owe its allegiance to the truths of history but to the truths of men. It tells the tale of that solitary man who is all men. It believes that where two men meet one of two things can occur and nothing else. In the one case a lie is born and in the other death.

  That sounds like death is the truth.

  Yes. It sounds like death is the truth. He looked at Billy. Even if the guerito in the song is your brother he is no longer your brother. He cannot be reclaimed.

  I aim to take him back with me.

  It will not be permitted.

  Who would I go to?

  There is no one to go to.

  Who would I go to if there was someone?

  You could apply to God. Otherwise there is no one.

  Billy shook his head. He sat regarding his own dark visage where it yawed in the white ring of the cup. After a while he looked up. He looked into the fire. Do you believe in God? he said.

  Quijada shrugged. On godly days, he said.

  No one can tell you what your life is goin to be, can they?

  No.

  It's never like what you expected.

  Quijada nodded. If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them? People speak about what is in store. But there is nothing in store. The day is made of what has come before. The world itself must be surprised at the shape of that which appears. Perhaps even God.

  We come down here to get our horses. Me and my brother. I dont think he even cared about the horses, but I was too dumb to see it. I didnt know nothin about him. I thought I did. I think he knew a lot more about me. I'd like to take him back and bury him in his own country.

  Quijada drained his cup and sat holding it in his lap.

  I take it you dont think that's such a good idea.

  I think you may have some problems.

  But that aint all you think.

  No.

  You think he belongs where he's at.

  I think the dead have no nationality.

  No.

  But their kin do.

  Quijada didnt answer. After a long time he stirred. He leaned forward. He turned the white porcelain bowl up and held it in the palm of his hand and regarded it. The world has no name, he said. The names of the cerros and the sierras and the deserts exist only on maps. We name them that we do not lose our way. Yet it was because the way was lost to us already that we have made those names. The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. And it is because these names and these coordinates are our own naming that they cannot save us. That they cannot find for us the way again. Your brother is in that place which the world has chosen for him. He is where he is supposed to be. And yet the place he has found is also of his own choosing. That is a piece of luck not to be despised.

  GRAY SKY, gray land. All day he slouched north on the wet and slouching horse through the sandy muck of the upcountry roads. The rain went harrying over the road before him in the gusts of wind and rattled over his slicker and the hooftracks oozed shut behind him. In the evening he heard again the cranes overhead, passing high above the overcast, balancing beneath them the bight of the earth's curve, earth's weather. Their metal eyes grooved to the pathways which God has chosen for them to follow. Their hearts in flood.

  He rode into the town of San Buenaventura in the evening and he rode through pools of standing water past the alameda with its whitepainted treetrunks and the old white church and out along the old road to Gallego. The rain had stopped and rain dripped from the alameda trees and dripped from the high canales in the mudwalled houses he passed. The road led up through the low hills to the east of the town and set in a bench of land there a mile or so above the town lay the cemetery.

  He turned off and slogged out along the muddy lane and halted his horse before the wooden gates. The cemetery was a large and wild enclosure set in a field filled with loose stones and brambles and surrounded by a low mud wall already then in ruins. He halted and looked out over this desolation. He turned and looked back at the packhorse and he looked at the gray scud of clouds and at the evening light failing in the west. A wind was blowing down from the gap in the mountains and he stepped down and dropped the reins and passed through the gate and started out across the rough cobbled field. A raven flew up out of the bracken and parried away on the wind croaking thinly. The red sandstone dolmens that stood upr
ight among the low tablets and crosses on that wild heath looked like the distant ruins of some classic enclave ringed about by the blue mountains, the closer hills.

  Most of the graves were no more than cairns of rock without marker of any kind. Some held a simple wooden cross composed of two slats nailed together or twisted together with wire. The cobbled rocks everywhere underfoot were the scattered remains of these cairns and ignoring the red stone steles this place looked the burial of some aftermath of battle. Other than the wind in the wild rough grass there was no sound at all. He walked out along a narrow and uncertain footpath winding among the graves, among the slabs and sepulchre tablets blacked over with lichen. In the middle distance a red stone pillar in the shape of a pollarded treetrunk.

  His brother was buried against the southmost wall under a board cross in which had been burned with a hot nail the words Fall el 24 de febrero 1943 sus hermanos en armas dedican este recuerdo D E P. A ring of rusted wire that once had been a wreath leaned against the board. There was no name.

  He squatted and took off his hat. Off to the south a pile of trash was smoldering in the damp and a black smoke rose into the dark overcast. The desolation of that place was a thing exquisite.

  It was dark when he rode back into Buenaventura. He dismounted before the church door and walked in and took off his hat. At the altar a few small candles burned and in that half fugitive light knelt a solitary figure bent at prayer. He walked up the aisle. There were loose tiles in the floor that rocked and clicked under his boots. He bent and touched the kneeling figure on the arm. Senora, he said.

  She raised her head, a dark seamed face faintly visible in the darker folds of her rebozo.

  Donde esta el sepulturero?